Sometimes lessons in biology some unexpectedly, as when a rottweiler appeared over my right shoulder while I was kneeling to trim some rose bushes early this summer. He was largemore so for being at eye leveland he was wearing a collar made of chain links large enough to anchor a small ship. I turned to face him as an archive of rottweiler news stories came up from long-term memory, none of them happy, all of them populated by mutilated people and by dogs destroyed at the direction of the authorities.
What to do next? How did I appear to this animal? Did I look like a threat? Did I look like lunch? He certainly wasn't behaving in a menacing manner, but maybe he was waiting for the right moment to express his breed's well-known, vicious disposition. One of us had to do something, I figured, although reason, the pride of Homo sapiens, was little comfort in the face of the evolutionary legacy of Canis familiaris: powerful jaws and teeth adapted to gripping and tearing. I extended......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 1896
Approximate Pages: 8 (260 words per double-spaced page) |